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An excerpt from "South of the Mountain"Written by Ron Short A Note About the Play
"South of the Mountain" is set in the central Appalachian Mountain coalfields of Dickenson County, Virginia during the period of 1945 to 1955. The characters are: Thad, a Dickenson County native, who is 20 to 30 years old; Thad’s wife, Mabel, an eastern Kentucky native who is five years younger than her husband; and Eb, Thad’s older brother, a bachelor who never left the family farm. The age of the characters varies with the particular story they are telling. All three are on the stage at all times. Costumes are simple, reflecting the dress of the day. The scenic and lighting designs vary according to venue: from the simple for a community center to the complex for a large auditorium. Properties include a roughly hewn wooden bench, two plain wooden straight-backed chairs, and a small table. Musical instruments – fiddle, banjo, and guitar – when not in use are placed within the set. Roadside Theater premiered "South of the Mountain" in 1982 at Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky. From 1982 to 1997, the play toured nationally and internationally with the same ensemble cast. THAD I shunned the coal mines as long as I could. I always kinda dreaded gettin’ started in 'em. I just didn't like the idea of goin’ underground. I guess I'd been walkin’ ’round on top of it too long. But, that's all the work there was around, ’ceptin’ farming and I knowed where that would get you. MABEL (enthusiastically) In the coal camp they was houses on each side of the holler, and the houses was connected. THAD One great big row of houses on one side MABEL and one great big row of houses on the other. EB (disparagingly) There was no separation between the buildings, just walls. You see, it saved the coal company money by not having to have a wall and a roof for each house. Just one big long house. THAD (disregarding Eb’s sarcasm) One side was called the Titanic MABEL and one was called Noah's Ark. THAD Right down at the end of all them houses was a big company store. MABEL There wasn't no hospital, but they was a doctor's office. THAD All furnished by the coal company, EB but they got ever’ cent of it back. ‘Cause they wouldn't let you get ahead. THAD The coal company furnished your housing, electricity, had the commissary for the food . . . but they took it outta your pay. EB (disgusted) And they paid you so little hit wadn't much more than a labor camp. MABEL (laughing) You talk about a raggedy, black bunch of younguns from fightin' through the coal camp from one end to the other in the coal dust in the summertime, and all the mud in the wintertime. From hand to mouth, they just lived. THAD It got to where we had to go to the store each day and buy what we could draw in scrip for that day’s work. MABEL Then you'd go back the next day. I'd buy a pound of soup beans and cook ‘em THAD and go the next day MABEL ’cause the man had to work the next day for to get some more scrip. EB I've heared people say they'd rather do anything than hoe corn THAD & MABEL so that's what we done! EB It was hard to tell when they was workin’ and when they wadn't. MABEL (exuberantly) But people follered it and lived with it right on up. THAD Up to that time, in the mountains, people had never been that close to where people was a-makin' some money. EB (exasperated) Money, money, money. That’s all you ever talk about. They wadn't but one man that I remember ever’body kinda talked about as havin’ any money, and that was old man Henry Whitt. He had got shell shocked in the Army, during World War One, I reckon, and he drawed a pension. Seemed to me like it was about thirty dollars a month, and that was total disability. But Henry kept a bull. (Thad steps up protectively to Mabel; this is rough talk.) Wadn't many people had enough money where they could afford to buy a bull, and when you took your cow down there to Henry -- I mean to his bull -- that'd cost you a dollar, that is if she got with calf, otherwise it didn't cost you nothin'. But, they wadn’t many people that had that kinda steady income. MABEL (angrily speaking up for herself) There's a difference between wantin’ and needin’. When you want the things you can't have, then you’re poor! EB Yeah and they’s a difference between wantin’ and gettin’! (Thad and Mabel separate. Thad moves to far stage right, Mabel to far stage left.) MABEL (to audience) We started kinda fixin’ the house up, him with a regular income. Got linoleum for the floors, curtains, a new couch, things like that. He was makin’ good money, but it was hard work. THAD They was somethin’ funny ’bout the whole thing right there from the start, best I could figure. They needed all this coal to generate all this power, but I have shot many a cut of coal with a breast auger – that was a drill where there was no power whatsoever. You cranked her by hand. You'd drill, shoot, and load your own coal for a dollar a car, nothin' for the rock, and you handled as much rock as coal. You didn't use nothin' but a pick and shovel. It was the sweat, muscle, and blood of the coal miner what generated the power for this country. EB When Thad first started workin’ in them mines told me he figgered he'd just get a little money ahead and get out. But he never did seem to get money ahead. THAD For the first time in my life, I got credit. It wadn't much, just a little ole store up from the house. Feller kept a "runnin’ tab" on you. I went in once a week and tried to catch up to it. MABEL (apologetically) It was easier that way so you could send the kids. We just got the things we needed, meal, flour, sugar, lard, stuff for his bucket. THAD Yeah and they's real glad to write it down on your tab for you. Besides that, you never had no money in your pockets. MABEL (turning to audience) ’Til we got the refrigerator you couldn't keep nothin' fresh. We'd keep milk and butter in the root cellar, but in summer it wouldn't keep long. You had to can or pickle ever’thing you raised. You couldn't keep leftovers – you eat 'em or they was fed to the animals. We'd never had ice. After we got the refrigerator, we'd just make ice water ‘cause it tasted so good. I made ice cream for the kids. Used to, you could buy this mix from the store and make ice cream in the ice trays. That refrigerator sure made things a lot easier. THAD We used carbide lights then. It was a pretty rough go. EB Hits a wonder they hadn't been a lot more men killed than there was. Said sometimes the roof was so low you couldn't even take a drink settin’ up. THAD Lots a times you had to lay down on your side so you could tilt your head back. But that smoke from the dynamite was worse. That stuff'd make you so sick. EB There wadn't enough air in the mines to push it out. THAD Give you a headache to where lots of times you'd have to come out just for the like of air. No dust control. Coal miners eat the dust, that was your dust control. You couldn't see your hand before you or nothin' else with all that dust. EB I don't know why it didn't kill a man in thirty days. MABEL (appealing to audience) With an electric stove you can cook a meal in half the time it takes on a woodstove. When we got ours, there was a special deal where you got an electric mixer too. I always liked to bake, and this made it so much easier you wouldn't believe it. They come out with cake mixes that most cases was better than cakes baked from scratch. Canned biscuits, too. We didn't like 'em too much, but I bought 'em ever’ now and then. EB First car in our family, I reckon he bought it. THAD It was a Chrysler, which just about put us in the poor house, deeper than we was. I give $75 for it. That was the most money I'd ever had. EB (laughing) Hit was worth maybe 75 cents. THAD Yeah, I'd a-been better off without that Chrysler. MABEL (suddenly remorseful, near tears) I've seen him come in with his clothes froze stiff on his body where he'd worked in them water holes, got wet, then come outside. Then, when he could get a ride, ride home in the back of a truck in the middle of winter. I've seen him come in, where I could have cried he looked so pitiful. But even still, it was better than not havin’ a job at all. You had to make it one way or another. (Suddenly going to Thad) But I always vowed if ever there was any way that I could get him out of them mines, that I was goin’ to do it. THAD (rejecting Mabel’s coddling) Hush now. Shore it was dangerous, ever’body knowed that. I've seen it fall, and I've had it to fall around me. I was loadin' one day, and looked up and seen the shimmer on the top. I started to run, and a big slab come down and the coal car caught it. That was all that kept it from catchin’ me. You constantly lived with that. It was just a way of life. You didn't question it. They wadn't no other work around. Tried not to think that much about it. You didn't run out askin’ for help. A job was all you asked for. I got ulcers though, and never could get rid of 'em long as I was in the mines. Kept a vomitin’ and vomitin’, couldn't eat nothin’. Atter John L. and the union come in, we got medical benefits, so I went over to see this doctor in Harlan. He took some X-rays and run a bunch a tests on me, and he told me, "Go hunt you a job outta them mines. You get out of 'em and stay out of 'em, if you want to live." (Song – sung and played on guitar by Thad) Running on Empty I never thought (Chorus) Hey mister a job is all I need. I cuss the day (Chorus) (Repeat 1st verse) |
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